Author Michael Roberts

Update: Tomorrow, February 3, a memorial service will be held in Boulder for Laura Kriho, an important and passionate cannabis activist who died earlier this week; see our previous coverage below.

Information about the gathering is included in a lovely and heartfelt remembrance shared by members of Kriho’s family under the auspices of the Cannabis Therapy Institute, the organization Kriho used to educate the public about the medicinal attributes of marijuana and push for greater access to a plant she felt had been unfairly demonized.

Continue to learn more about Kriho and the service details.

Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett has been named to a working group of DAs from across the country who will advise the administration of President Donald Trump on marijuana policy. Garnett hopes to influence the Justice Department and presumptive attorney general Jeff Sessions, an avowed pot hater, to be thoughtful about cannabis and not make the sort of mistakes he associates with their actions to date regarding immigration, as exemplified by the chaos that followed an executive order enacting a temporary refugee ban and more.

“As a DA, I’ve been very involved with protection of the immigrant community,” Garnett says. “And watching that issue, I see some parallels between how the Trump administration may approach immigration and how they may approach marijuana.”

Three years ago, the first of three marijuana amnesty boxes was installed at Aspen-Pitkin County Airport. The idea behind the boxes was to give flyers a way to dispose of legal cannabis before they boarded a plane bound for a destination where the substance might be against the law, and Pitkin County Undersheriff Ron Ryan considers the containers to be a success, even though weed isn’t the only aromatic thing sometimes left in them.

Other examples? “Dirty diapers,” Ryan says. “Garbage. And leftover Starbucks. That’s one of the worst, because a lot of the drinks from there are milk-based. If they’re left inside for a week, the smell becomes pretty horrendous.”

Chauncey Billups, a Denver native, is the greatest basketball player ever from Colorado — a star for the CU Buffs and the Denver Nuggets, one of several NBA teams for which he played in a long and distinguished career (including the Detroit Pistons, with whom he won a 2004 championship and a finals MVP).

And now, he’s joined the chorus of former athletes supporting the use of medical marijuana in pro sports.

On top of that, Billups not only confirmed that some of his former teammates smoked marijuana before games, but that he thought many played better after doing so.

The election of Donald Trump and his nomination of marijuana-hating senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general has raised concern among members of the cannabis community about a crackdown on pot laws in states such as Colorado.

Such worries aren’t without merit. University of Denver law professor Sam Kamin recently outlined three ways Donald Trump could shut down state-legal marijuana, and NORML executive director Erik Altieri told us that “we need to make sure we’re ready to stand up and fight should that time come.”

Like Altieri, Aaron Smith, co-founder and executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, among the oldest and largest marijuana business organizations, stresses the importance of lobbying Congress to hold the line against a pot-biz crackdown. But in a wide-ranging interview on view below, he describes himself as cautiously optimistic that the worst-case scenario won’t come to pass.

In a recent interview, University of Denver law professor Sam Kamin outlined three ways Donald Trump could shut down state-legal marijuana — a prospect that has raised increasing levels of concern among cannabis reformers since the president-elect’s nomination of pot-hating Senator Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General.

Erik Altieri, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, shorthanded as NORML, acknowledges that such worries are prevalent right now, and he doesn’t dismiss them out of hand. Indeed, he encourages NORML supporters and anyone who objects to the federal government treating marijuana as a substance on par with heroin to be prepared for a crackdown, even if one has not yet been announced.

Ever since the nomination of hardcore pot prohibitionist Senator Jeff Sessions for the position of United States Attorney General, numerous members of the cannabis community have expressed increasing concern that the incoming Donald Trump administration might crack down on state-legal marijuana businesses in Colorado and beyond.

At this writing, neither Trump nor Sessions has publicly announced such a policy. But if they decide to move in this direction, what tactics would be at their disposal? How would they go about attempting to outlaw an entire industry — one that employs thousands of people and generates millions in tax revenues for the State of Colorado?

In a new interview with Rolling Stone magazine, outgoing President Barack Obama makes his most explicit comments about marijuana decriminalization to date.

He argues that cannabis should be treated as a public-health issue along the lines of cigarettes and alcohol — and pointedly notes that most of those who voted for President-elect Donald Trump agree with him.